The Self-Serving Bias

The text describes "defensive attribution" as the tendency to attribute our successes to internal or personal factors but to attribute our failures to situational factors beyond our control. Also known as the "self-serving bias," this bias accounts for the consistent human tendency to take credit for success but to deny responsibility for failure (e.g., doing well on an exam because of innate brilliance or studying hard versus failing an exam because it was unfair or tricky; winning a game because of athletic prowess versus losing a game because "the referees were blind"). Dunn (1989) notes that students often have trouble recognizing the self-serving attributional bias in their own behavior, especially when it extends beyond the internal-external dimension related to success and failure on a particular task. To illustrate this bias to your students in a context other than task success or failure, try the following exercise suggested by Dunn. At the end of the class period prior to the one in which you'll introduce the self-serving bias, tell students that during the next class you will be talking about the self-concept and that you want to collect some data to use in that discussion. Ask them to take out a sheet of paper and to draw a line down the middle. Tell them to label one column "strengths" and the other "weaknesses" and then to list their personal strengths and weaknesses. Emphasize that their responses are anonymous and that they should not put their name on the sheet. Collect the sheets and before the next class compute the mean number of strengths and weaknesses listed. Your students should consistently list more strengths than weaknesses. You can then use these results to generate a discussion of the self-serving bias, including the processes that might contribute to its occurrence and its potential positive and/or negative effects on behavior. Dunn also suggested that you could perform this exercise simply by having students verbally volunteer strengths and weaknesses and recording their responses on the board. If you use this public method, Dunn cautioned to be sure to point out that the variety of responses may be limited by which students participated and self-presentational concerns present in a public setting.

Dunn, D. S. (1989). Demonstrating a self-serving bias. Teaching of Psychology, 16, 21-22.